Matt Yglesias

50 Responses to “Will Gets Fair”

1. sunsin Says:
   December 7th, 2008 at 12:33 pm

   You know what would be really funny?

   The wingnuts go on and on about the Fairness Doctrine until everyone is numb and the universal reaction is “Meh!”

   And then someone goes ahead and really does revive the Fairness Doctrine. And the wingnuts can’t get any attention or concern because they’ve talked everyone numb beforehand.

2. El Cid Says:
   December 7th, 2008 at 12:37 pm

   Right wing sh*t bags have been yammering on about how liberal the media is forever. And their standard is a fair one — if some particularly medium isn’t screamingly Neanderthal right wing on each and every issue, it’s liberal, and darned near treasonous.

   Why? Because it works, and because it helps divert attention from the essentially conservative nature of mass media ownership.

   It’s just like how they yammer about the threat of liberal government even when they control every single branch of it.

3. JimboSlice Says:
   December 7th, 2008 at 12:56 pm

   If I am at the newsstand and want to read a conservative paper I can pick up the Washington Times or the WSJ. If I’m watching TV and want some conservative TV I can turn on Fox News or CNBC. If I’m online and want conservative websites I can go to Drudge or Newsmax.

   If I’m in the car (which most people are ~1.5hrs/day) and want liberal radio I can go …?

   That to me is biased media, when there exists no alternatives.

4. lfv Says:
   December 7th, 2008 at 1:03 pm

   I, for one, am terrified of conservatives in elections going forward. The addition of the widely popular amongst the general public “anti-fairness doctrine” issue sure meshes well with how strongly most Americans feel about hating gays, controlling uteruses, and banning evolution.

5. BigSalty Says:
   December 7th, 2008 at 1:12 pm

   Meanwhile, how dominant can liberals really be in the mainstream media if we can’t even stop George Will from just making stuff up about us in his widely syndicated Washington Post column?

   Hooray for sophistry.

6. mark Says:
   December 7th, 2008 at 1:26 pm

   I actually wrote the ombudsman about this column. Will didn’t name a single person who actually advocates this position. I honestly have no idea what is the point of this fake Fairness Doctrine thing.

7. Kolohe Says:
   December 7th, 2008 at 1:52 pm

   Ok, I believe you, no one wants to bring back the fairness doctrine – there are those who are coy about it, like Chuck Shumer – but I agree it would be a political distraction with little to no gain worse than any that Clinton engaged in to start his campaign.

   But is George Will’s ’strangeness’ much different than people who said: “Nevertheless, you can count me among the 51 percent of young adults who think that four more years of Bush means a comeback for conscription”?

8. Kolohe Says:
   December 7th, 2008 at 1:54 pm

   that should be of course ‘administration’ not ‘campaign’. And a close tag eluded me

9. Saffi Says:
   December 7th, 2008 at 1:54 pm

   A “reactionary liberal”?

   The guy gets a paycheck for this?

10. gVOR08 Says:
    December 7th, 2008 at 2:13 pm

    George Will continues to remind me of the first time I read one of his columns, maybe twenty years or more ago. I read it because I skimmed and misread the byline. I thought it was Gary Wills. About four paragraphs in, I’m going ‘what the hell happened to Gary, Alzheimer’s? This is twaddle’. I finally realized it was Will, not Wills, but George has done nothing in the intervening years to erase that first impression.

11. mort Says:
    December 7th, 2008 at 2:30 pm

    I’m just amazed you could get thru a George Will column; I seem to fall asleep about half way. Geeky conservatives like George and Newt seem to think we all care about the fairness doctrine and card check, when nobody else is talking about it. As for liberal talk radio, hasn’t Randi Rhodes gotten boring since the election? 3 hour monologues just don’t cut it for me.

12. Michael C Says:
    December 7th, 2008 at 3:15 pm

    1. Raise straw man issue

    2. Declare victory

    3. Profit???

13. RAM Says:
    December 7th, 2008 at 3:22 pm

    I usually don’t agree with him, but George Will usually makes a sort of sense. This column, however, suggests he’s becoming unhinged. About all it consists of is Will shouting “LIBERAL!” until he runs out of gas. Very odd. If this is what passes for a thoughtful ‘conservative’ take on current politics, it’s gonna be a really long eight years.

14. Rich in PA Says:
    December 7th, 2008 at 3:53 pm

    I’m with Saffi (#10). You got me at “reactionary liberals,” if you’re trying to sell me on the insanity of what Will is saying. I suppose he means “reactionary” in the literal rather than political sense, that they’re reacting against the existing situation. In that case I’ll quote his sainted Margaret Thatcher: “Of course I’m a reactionary–there’s so much to react against.”

15. efgoldman Says:
    December 7th, 2008 at 4:11 pm

    I used to respect George Will because he was one of the first conservatives to say, out loud, that Nixon was a criminal and had to go. In fact for a long time he was the only one. Of course that was a long, long time ago, before MattY and (I’d guess) 90% of the readers of this blog were even born.

    Every once in a while he surprises by actually relying on common sense, even if it is from a rightward angle.

    But as I posted directly on a WaPo column about a year ago, the problem with conservative theorists is that they have no experience of the real world. I suggest that just once, he and others of his kind ought to be jobless for six months, have to pay for their own medical insurance (and god forbid someone in the family has a chronic or pre-existing condition) and have to choose, say, between making a car payment or a tuition payment. Just saying.

16. fostert Says:
    December 7th, 2008 at 4:17 pm

    Obama opposes the Fairness Doctrine. So Congress will have to override his veto. Given 58 Democrats in the Senate, that means at least nine Republicans will have to vote for the Fairness Doctrine to get it passed. So the conservative pundits need to answer this question: Which nine Republicans have voiced their support for the Fairness Doctrine? If they can’t answer that question, they need to shut up. That said, I like the fact they are wasting their time on this. The more time they spend on this, the less time they have to fight us on the real issues.

17. Rich Says:
    December 7th, 2008 at 5:02 pm

    Will also continues to spread his disingenuous nonsense about the impact of the New Deal on the Great Depression even after Krugman set him straight on “This Week.” He is either showing signs of a pre-senile dementia or is an outright liar.

18. The Golux Says:
    December 7th, 2008 at 5:37 pm

    Having so sullied liberalism that they have taken to calling themselves progressives…

    The sullying of liberalism was a deliberate effort on the part of conservatives. The RWNM has used “liberal” as a pejorative term for so long that it is political suicide to describe oneself as such, except maybe in Massachusetts.

19. datadave Says:
    December 7th, 2008 at 6:10 pm

    Matt, actually the Fairness Doctrine made a lot of sense and kept the media from being incredibly boorish and antagonistic as it has become now. Being old enough to remember there was a certain amount of dignity then that is absent now. And money can take over the media as we have seen with the rise of Rush Limbaugh supported by his corporate advertisers. (I haven’t drank any Snapple even though they now know their early support of Rush turned off a lot of people. btw, the air waves are a public asset not a private one as is the broadband wired network. But since an unlimited amount of channels are allowed broadband it’s not needed here..but with only a few channels on the radio band (at present with Christian stations often going over their wattage levels to crowd out li’l wattage public stations..). Radio is still important while driving and working…as downloading onto a Ipod I’ve found to be a pain in the ass. And the NPR network’s really gotten good of late imo too.

    The fact that commercial radio is dominated by the Right is example one.

    no offense, blogging really doesn’t amount to journalism usually. It’s entertaining though. I like it but does it match the power of NPR now? Funny the Right wanted to close down NPR and instead it’s the most powerful radio out there due to it’s own self imposed fairness doctrine of always balancing the right and the left on most issues. Or public TV? w/o which WF Buckley never would have become a great leader for the conservative cause. So I use Public radio and tv as exhibit two that a fairness standard works.

    And I note that even Fox Network is starting to add a little fairness as I think they know that one-sidedness only leads to “Group Think”. Now, If Obama would have a few contrarians on his team? So maybe fairness is coming back in style w/o govt. oversite? anyway, Obama and the Demos will have enough to deal with just saving the economy.

20. Andruw Says:
    December 7th, 2008 at 6:23 pm

    Don’t overthink this; Will is currently trying to re-establish his conservative bonafides after trashing Bush/McCain.

    Nothing more than restoring the brand. Nothing to see here.

21. 24AheadDotCom Says:
    December 7th, 2008 at 7:48 pm

    What MattY didn’t tell you is that his employers are pushing a plan that would have a similar impact as the FD. He’s done that before.

    What else is MattY being dishonest about? I’d provide a list except it would take a few months.

22. low-tech cyclist Says:
    December 7th, 2008 at 8:12 pm

    Matt, whiy is this George Will column any stranger than his other columns this year that said essentially the same thing?

    George Will, August 17:

    Two Democratic priorities in the next Congress would placate two factions that hold the party’s leash — organized labor and the far left. One is abolition of workers’ right to secret ballots in unionization elections. The other is restoration of the “fairness doctrine” in order to kill talk radio, on which liberals cannot compete. The doctrine would expose broadcasters to endless threats of litigation over government rules about how many views must be presented, on which issues, by whom, for how long and in what manner.

    George Will, September 18:

    Unless McCain is president, the government will reinstate the equally misnamed “fairness doctrine.” Until Ronald Reagan eliminated it in 1987, that regulation discouraged freewheeling political programming by the threat of litigation over inherently vague standards of “fairness” in presenting “balanced” political views. In 1980 there were fewer than 100 radio talk shows nationwide. Today there are more than 1,400 stations entirely devoted to talk formats. Liberals, not satisfied with their domination of academia, Hollywood and most of the mainstream media, want to kill talk radio, where liberals have been unable to dent conservatives’ dominance.

    George Will’s been spreading Fairness Doctrine Paranoia since summertime. What’s special about this time?

23. The Other Steve Says:
    December 7th, 2008 at 8:30 pm

    Nobody is trying to revive the fairness doctrine. I’m not sure how many times this can be said.

    Perhaps, but if you argue about something nobody is really proposing, it’s obviously a big political win.

    And it’s the game that counts, remember? John McCain taught us all that important lesson when he suspended his campaign, put on his tights and cape and flew back to Washington DC to save the bailout.

24. Ripley Says:
    December 7th, 2008 at 8:32 pm

    I’m with Andruw (#22) on this – it’s conciliation following the conservative debacle of the election and, especially, the raw failure that was the GOP candidate and his lovely assistant. Still, difficult to know what the veiled mea culpa is for in a future sense: the coming Republican resurgence, when every gay is hated, every womb co-opted, and evolution is not only not taught, it stops happening in vivo? Best of luck with that, George.

25. Anthony Damiani Says:
    December 7th, 2008 at 8:54 pm

    Shhhhh. Let them keep spending political capital fighting things we don’t care about!

26. fostert Says:
    December 7th, 2008 at 9:58 pm

    “Perhaps, but if you argue about something nobody is really proposing, it’s obviously a big political win.’”

    No it isn’t. It’s just a waste of time. And that’s good for us. Let them raise billions to defeat this. That’s billions that won’t go to defeat real proposals. It’s in our interest to spend a little time and money egging them on. Then they’ll spend much more time and money tilting at windmills. Ha ha ha, you fucks.

27. V Says:
    December 7th, 2008 at 9:59 pm

    It’s fine with me. Obama can include abandoning any attempt at a fairness doctrine revival as a compromise for something substantial. As long as Republicans create straw arguments, he might as well turn them into straw concessions.

28. fostert Says:
    December 7th, 2008 at 10:34 pm

    “he might as well turn them into straw concessions”

    Now that’s Change I can believe in!

29. bimmler Says:
    December 7th, 2008 at 10:50 pm

    If academia has ‘dominated’ by liberals for as long as conservatives say it has, where are the conservative options? Bob Jones, Regent? Surely conservatives, whether in control of all 3 branches or not, have had long enough and power enough to establish a reasonable academic alternative to liberal colleges. so where are they? Where are the conservative options to liberal govt, or media – the options that don’t suck, anyway? The big, bad liberals – who are weakness personified to so many repubs – somehow have kept a stranglehold on all these institutions for all these decades? Get off it, already.

30. El Cid Says:
    December 8th, 2008 at 4:23 am

    I like how the 24ahead guy thinks he’s exposing a liberal conspiracy when he links to pieces by liberals advocating against media consolidation.

    You got us! Issa conspirsee!

31. Milena Thomas Says:
    December 8th, 2008 at 10:03 am

    I’m sure you were all dying to read this link which I forgot.

    Richard “It’s time to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine” Durbin on the Fairness Doctrine.

32. allbetsareoff Says:
    December 8th, 2008 at 11:29 am

    The radio problem has been a megacorporate-radio problem. The current hegemon, Clear Channel, owns most of the high-powered radio outlets that broadcast Limbaugh, Hannity, et al. The firm now is in kind of limbo regarding a takeover and/or divestiture of some properties. Here’s a NY Times overview:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/books/review/Steinberg-t.html

    The best “fairness doctrine” for radio is to end dominance over the AM and FM bands by one or a few giant firms. This is within the FCC’s purview, simply by withholding license renewals from such an owner.

    Return local radio to local control, and much of its ideological slanting, as well as the homogenization of its programming, could be corrected.

33. edsbowlingshoe Says:
    December 8th, 2008 at 2:49 pm

    I think George Will is stuffing his bow tie with angel dust again. Hence the hallucinations. What a clown…

34. FrankN Says:
    December 8th, 2008 at 9:48 pm

    I have a theory why George Will might be frightened of the idea of the fairness doctrine. It has to do with recent cognitive research showing conservatives are less able to cope with ambiguity in their world.
    It’s been said Bush lives in a bubble, and so do many other conservatives subsisting on talk radio, Fox News, far right religious broadcasts and other mutually reinforcing conservative media. These media don’t want their listeners/followers exposed on a regular basis to contrary information and views, even if that contrary information falls far short of what the fairness doctrine would require. They represent ideologically pure communities set up to promote misunderstanding and intolerance of Americans with different values and cursed libruls.
    George will believes in “willful ignorance” by the conservative base to rally them for continued culture wars. Personally, I think periodic refutation of conservative nonsense that a licensed broadcasters MUST carry might promote better understanding by some viewers and reduce intolerance that the right wing needs to build its base. I’m not advocating the fairness doctrine, but I think there’s a need to air opposing views.

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